Market likely to be cautious on weak US jobs data

WAS it a good thing that Wall Street was closed on Friday and couldn't react to the shockingly weak March US jobs report?

These days it's hard to be sure, though on balance, you'd have to say that if the market had been open, it would probably have reacted positively to the report, seeing as how "bad economic news is good for stocks'' seems to have made a comeback in the past month.

The reason for thinking in this manner is that if the data is weak, then the US Federal Reserve may not be in such a hurry to raise interest rates. Of course the Fed is unlikely to base its actions on just one report, but the market being the reactive, momentum-driven creature that it is would have probably jumped on the news.